If HS2 is dead, is a third runway at Heathrow back in play?

Over at the Spectator’s Coffee House they are reading the last rites over the HS2 high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, quoting one anonymous minister as saying it’s “effectively dead”. In a taster for tomorrow’s mag, they identify four reasons for its demise – the fact that George Osborne has turned against it, that Justine Greening, the Transport Secretary, has always been sceptical, that the commercial case for the project is crumbling, and there is precious little public support.

Should we be surprised? Of course not. For a country that gave the world railways, we appear to have lost any sense of ambition, any sense of self-confidence, when it comes to grand projects like this. Remember the shambles over HS1 – the high-speed link to the Channel Tunnel? It opened in 2007 – 13 years after the tunnel. Crossrail is finally being built beneath London – 38 years after the idea was first mooted. And it’s not just railways. Planning studies began for Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in 1988 – it opened 30 years later. Brunel built the Great Western Railways in less time than it took to complete the planning process for Terminal 5.

HS2 was never going to be a shovel-ready infrastructure project to help get us out of recession – not this recession at least. It might just have been ready for the next recession. Now it looks as though the priority will be air travel. At PMQs earlier, Richmond MP Zac Goldsmith pressed David Cameron to re-state the Coalition’s opposition to a third runway at Heathrow. The PM’s response fell well short of being unambiguous. So instead of a 120-mile of high speed railtrack, we may get two and a half miles of airport concrete in West London.